‘BEACON – a pamphlet series in ten issues’ focuses on how the commitment of artists’ to wider social movements informs contemporary artistic practice. The series will feature texts by artists whose practices engage with language and visual arts.
Ruth Buchanan is an artist from Aotearoa New Zealand who lives in Berlin. She works across exhibition making, writing, design and teaching. Her work draws out the contested and dynamic relationship between the body, power, language and the archive. This process of contesting often relates closely to the types of relationships that standardized infrastructures such as archives, libraries and museums have contributed to creating between our bodies and society at large. Buchanan actively asks how these relationships could be otherwise. Recent and forthcoming exhibition projects include Heute nacht geträumt, Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart, and The scene in which I find myself / Or, where does my body belong, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Ngāmotu New Plymouth. Recent editorial projects include Uneven Bodies (Reader) including contributions from Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Gabi Ngcobo and Tina Barton, and www.evacuationtapes.net including contributions from Anna Gritz and Sriwhana Spong. In 2019 she received the Walters Prize, the preeminent biennial contemporary art award for an Aotearoa New Zealand artist.
J.C. Sturm (1927-2009) was a pioneering Aotearoa New Zealand writer of Taranaki and Te Whakatōea. She published four books of poetry and prose and her work has also been included in numerous journals and anthologies.
Anne Boyer is a poet and essayist who lives in Kansas City. Her most recent book, The Undying, won the 2020 Pulitzer Price in nonfiction. Her other books include a book of poetry, Garments Against Women, and a book of essays, A Handbook of Disappointed Fate.